well, im from spain and can agree to a lot of things said here.
but i think the main issue is the way the ATCs have been trained so far....
The idea was to make applicants study everything or almost everything b4 the formation and make sure they had a FIRST certificate level of english.
what this leaded to was to an incredible ammount of good students trying to get the job, by memorizing the texts and subjects.
So memory monsters would get perfect scores and with a mid-low level of english the place to develope in the trainning centers.
what happened then, was that some of those students didnt have the abstract and spacial abilities to do the job.
what they are doing starting this year (july 2010) is the opposite, testing on aptitude (memory, spacial and abstract) and a much higher level of english, something in between advanced and proficiency (bt 5 and 6 out of 6 on cambridge scale).
So therefore in some years time from now , we should see some improvement in the spanish CTs as newer blood arrives .
(hopefully im one of them as im going to madrid to take the FEAST during this month)